


Let Me Build a Bridge (for I Cannot Fill the Chasm)

by vivilove



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Universe, F/M, Falling In Love, Half-Sibling Incest, Maybe it's tinfoil, Post Season 6 to Early Season 7, Shame, Smut, Trust Issues, but i can dream, but they're cousins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-21
Updated: 2017-05-21
Packaged: 2018-11-03 09:53:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,910
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10964826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vivilove/pseuds/vivilove
Summary: After Jon is proclaimed King in the North, he struggles to maintain trust and strengthen his relationship with his half-sister Sansa.  As they prepare to face the Winter together, their feelings grow from a sibling bond to something more.It picks up the night after Jon is declared king and continues until after he leaves for Dragonstone.





	Let Me Build a Bridge (for I Cannot Fill the Chasm)

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from lyrics to "Fortress Around Your Heart" by Sting.
> 
> Several wonderful fics are coming out in anticipation of the upcoming season and I wanted to add my bit of tinfoil to the mix.

Alone in the night with only the light of the dwindling fire to illuminate the room, her words washed over his tattered soul again.

 _“I’m not a Stark,”_ he’d said.

 _“You are to me,”_ she’d replied. No smile, no jest. Utter sincerity in her tone and nothing but truth in those crystal blue eyes.

Why should those four words spoken by his sister invade his mind and body as he lay abed this night after being proclaimed a king? King...the very last thing Jon Snow would’ve ever imagined being called. There were so many words said today as the lords and knights and free folk gathered at Winterfell. Things that were perhaps more significant than the words she’d spoken on the battlements.

 _You are to me_. It mattered to him. More than any other words that had been said this day…or any day.

Jon gave up on sleep and rolled out of bed. Restless and frustrated, he poured himself some ale. He let the liquid burn his throat and then poured himself some more. He sat down heavily at the desk in his chamber and looked at Longclaw laying across the table.

_“Kneel before me, lay your sword at my feet and arise as Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell.”_

_“Winterfell belongs to my sister Sansa,”_ he’d told Stannis.

_And now I have stolen it from her. Is that what Lady Stark always feared I’d do?_

_“We need to trust each other,”_ he’d told her on the battlements that morning after she’d called him a Stark and then told him that winter was here. _How are you ever to trust me_ _when I stole what was yours by rights?_

He wondered if Sansa was struggling with sleep in the Lord’s chamber. He knew that likely she was.

He wondered if any of this were real. _Did I ever truly wake or am I still dead?_

He’d like to say he hated being chosen as king. Perhaps that was not entirely true. But to be called a Stark…and for Sansa to be the one who said it? _It’s the first thing I ever_ _remember wanting_. He wasn’t Jon Stark though. He was still a Snow.

_“You may not have my name, but you have my blood.”_

_You are to me._

Over and over, those four words pounded into his skull. He groaned in frustration and wondered if this was what madness tasted like.

He took up his sword and threw on his cloak, the cloak she made him. He ran his scarred hand across the soft fur and the leather, the sigil of House Stark there for all to see. He was no fool. She’d made it for him with love and care but she also knew he needed to look the part if they were recruit men to their cause. She had embroidered the direwolf on her dress and she wanted the North to look upon him and see Ned Stark’s son, even if it was his bastard one.

But that moment when she gave him the cloak had made him feel something he had dearly wanted for a long time. Accepted. And today, she’d made him feel that tenfold with just four words.

He would seek her out this night and say what he could to make things right between them.

 

* * *

 

 

Sansa stared up at the ceiling and pulled the covers up a bit higher. Her mind twisted and turned replaying events from the days since they’d reclaimed their home. The conversation with Jon on the battlements…all the things she’d wanted to say seemingly swept clean out of her mind when he first spoke. She had managed to offer an apology but it wasn’t the one she had planned, not the explanation she’d felt he was owed even if it might never be enough of one. If she’d lost him that day, if help had arrived too late, what meaning would their victory really have held for her?

She trusted him as she trusted no other living man. Her family was all she was willing to put her faith in anymore though she’d not had enough faith in Jon ultimately to share everything. The confusion of feelings when he did not rage at her but only bore her secret-keeping with a slight grimace and a plea for trust…and a kiss to pledge that trust.

 _Trust? I have lost so much to that word_ , she’d wanted to tell him.

The godswood and Littlefinger slithering along to whisper his schemes and designs and trying to sow discord between her and the only family that remained to her.

And then the meeting in the Great Hall when everything had turned out so unexpectedly. _Didn’t see that coming, did you, Lord Baelish? Neither did I._

 _“We know no king but the King in the North whose name is Stark,”_ little Lady Lyanna Mormont had said. Sansa had smiled…until the girl continued, _“I don’t care if he’s a bastard._ _Ned Stark’s blood runs through his veins…”_

_Does it not run through mine as well?_

For a moment, the disappointment had been like a physical blow. To be overlooked and dismissed like a pretty talking bird or a stupid little girl. She had closed her mouth and let the smile die on her lips as she listened to the girl and men praise her half-brother, Jon.

But when he stood and looked back at her, the look in his eye…the pleasure was evident but he was seeking her approval as well. She smiled at him and her heart swelled with love for him even though part of her knew envy. She had wanted that pleasure, too…the pleasure of being acknowledged and accepted. Still they had named Jon their king and the Starks ruled the North once more. And Sansa was home at last with no monster sharing her bed this time.

 _They may never accept me as their queen_ , she thought. In their eyes, she was a Bolton, a Lannister…a female. _Which is most damning, I wonder? No one will ever want me for_ _anything but my claim. And now that has been given to Jon_.

 _“We need to trust each other,”_ he had said. The words echoed through her tired mind. _Will you ever truly trust me, Jon? And will you ever listen to the things I say to you? I have_ _given you reason enough to doubt me_.

Trust had been ripped from her so many times since she’d went to Cersei to beg her to interfere on her behalf so that Father would not send her back North. It had been shattered after Joffrey had shown her his idea of mercy. It had repeatedly been shamed and beaten out of her at Court. It had been used against her until she no longer trusted the word ‘trust.’ The Vale had done nothing to reaffirm it and then she’d returned here and married _him_.

She lay abed in her parent’s chambers and remembered all the things she’d been too foolish to appreciate when she was still a girl. _I thought my song was beginning that day,_ _but it was almost done._

She’d eagerly rode South away from half her family, the people of Winterfell and her home. Now, so many of those people were gone forever and the castle seemed like a shell of itself at times.

She thought of the boy lying in the crypts next and the man torn to pieces in the kennels that had killed him. She wondered if Arya and Bran would ever return and if she and Jon were capable of rebuilding Winterfell together. And Jon…what was she to do about Jon? And what would he do with her?

Sansa dug the heels of her palms into her eyes to drive away the tears she didn’t want to shed when a knock at the door roused her. She rose, threw her cloak over her shoulders and answered.

“Jon?” she said as he stood before her, his eyes cast downward.

He raised his chin and met her eye. “Sansa, may we talk?”

She opened her door wider and motioned him inside. “Can’t you sleep?” she asked as she led him to her fire.

“No…I don’t sleep well. But then you already know that.” She did. There was only so much privacy to be had during their journey from the Wall to all the places they’d visited recruiting forces to take back the North. Jon had been Lord Commander of their fighters and he’d had the largest pavilion since councils were held there but Sansa slept nearby. He set Ghost to guard her but often the wolf and her would wander to him in the night and find him awake regardless of the hour. “Were you sleeping?” he asked then.

“No…I don’t sleep well. But then you already know that,” she said with a faint smile.

“Aye,” he said with an answering glimmer of a smile. “So, neither of us sleeps well even now when we are home again.”

Sansa said nothing to that. Jon knew why her sleep was most often troubled and she knew why his was.

“Perhaps company in bed would help,” she said. His shocked expression was amusing. “Forgive me. I am only jesting, Jon. I know you’re not the sort to seek out a…” She trailed off feeling uncertain. “Jon…why are you here at this hour?”

“To see how much you hate me now, I suppose,” he said grimly staring into the fire

“I could never hate you. You’re my family.”

“I took…”

“It was given to you. No one offered it to me. No one but Littlefinger and I don’t want anything from him.” She reached out her hand to him and was grateful when he took it. He turned his somber face towards her. “We reclaimed our home. That was what I wanted. Well, that and…but we couldn’t save Rickon. We are here at least…and together,” she said choking on those tears again that she did not wish to shed. _What good have tears ever done me?_

She recognized his expression and knew he meant to come closer, to hold her. Her heart had been guarded for so very long and breaking down in her brother’s arms tonight was something she was not prepared to do, though perhaps it would’ve been sweet to be held again. But her pride had been stung enough this day.

She hurriedly rose from where she sat and paced away from him. She poured him some ale and, once she’d handed it to him, fussed about her chamber as though she had urgent tasks to attend to in the dark of night. And, Jon stayed put by the fire watching her burn off her nervous energy. He waited until she finally sat down again before he spoke.

“I’ll need your help…sorely,” he confessed. “I don’t know anything about being a king. I didn’t last all that long as a Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch before my own men murdered me. I would’ve died outside these gates were it not for you and the Knights of the Vale.”

“You mustn’t doubt yourself so. Jon, they chose you because they see that you are a good man as Father was and a good leader that inspires loyalty and trust from those wise enough to see. You need me, you say? We need each other, I would argue. But you are right. You will need my help in this…and you will always have it,” she finished, giving him a warm and heartfelt smile and receiving one of his in return.

 

* * *

 

 

Her screams pierced through the stone walls and pierced his heart like a blade. He raced to her chambers before he even thought twice. The guard by her doorway looked uncertain but Jon was not. He pushed past the man and entered.

She was already quiet again and sitting up when he spied her. She had her arms folded across her chest. Her shift was thick and long-sleeved and her lovely hair hung loose about her shoulders. Winter was here and people of the North knew to dress warmly but he still averted his eyes. She needed him…not his eyes roaming her body.

“Sansa?”

“Twas just a bad dream,” she said in softer voice than the one she’d used when they’d last spoken earlier.

They had quarreled in the hall with the lords…and then with each other. He hated arguing with her and yet…that spark that flew between them in the heat of their arguments was unsettling. There was a passion, a heat to the way he fought with her that was…enticing. He had tried to ignore it but feared it would not be ignored forever. And the more time they spent together the more they argued.

It wasn’t that they were incompatible. For Jon at least, who had never been much of dissembler, he could not pretend with Sansa. When he saw or heard something he didn’t like or agree with, he had to say it. And that she was obviously willing to express her opinion to him, after having to bury her feelings and put on a mask in front of others for so long, spoke of that trust that he longed to gain from her fully in time.

He gingerly sat on the edge of her bed, making sure not to draw too near and make her uncomfortable. She did not shrink from his touch but he knew that it was not his touch that would be unwelcome but rather the memory of another’s. He held out his hand towards her without looking, waiting to see if she would take it or not. And when she accepted it at once, something in his heart flipped and tilted and turned. It was a sensation he’d experienced more than once in her presence. _You are to me._ His callused thumb caressed the smooth skin of her delicate wrist.

“Just a bad dream then,” he said in a soothing tone, waiting for her to speak if she would.

The silence stretched on and on and he thought she might prefer not to say anything tonight. But at last, she did.

“My home became my prison. My chamber was my torture cell. My husband was my tormentor. I tried to be brave. I tried to be like Mother and Father and Robb. But he knew how to break me. He enjoyed it,” she said quietly. Jon bit the inside of his cheek and kept his silence. He would not interrupt. “Joffrey was always annoyed if I cried even when he was the one making me cry. But Ramsey…Ramsey seemed to draw happiness from my tears and my pain.” She turned to face him at last. “Jon…will I ever truly be whole again?”

“You are...you will be.”

He wished he had some better words, some calming or clever words of comfort to give. Instead, he sat there and held her hand for several long minutes, staring at her, watching the tears she did not want acknowledged slide down her face. The fire crackled and her breathing slowed. Her tears stopped and her sniffles quieted. She laid back down and turned away from him, releasing his hand. Jon rose and covered her with the furs she’d thrown off in her terror. His hand hovered over her shoulder, wanting to touch it…to offer her some additional solace if he could. He withdrew it though and started towards the chamber door.

“Thank you, Jon. I’m sorry...”

“You never need apologize over that. Sansa…we took it back. You took it back. It’s your home and not his. It was never his. Don’t make it a prison of bad memories.”

 

* * *

 

 

Three days and he looked more exhausted every time she looked upon his face. He’d nearly nodded off at the council meeting and Petyr smirked from the corner raising her ire. He was tired but he could not rest. No one here understood that so well as Sansa.

“Leave us,” she commanded. The lords looked at her in surprise but they rose and left all the same. Once they were gone, Jon held his head in his hands and apologized. “Quiet,” she said gently. “How long has it been since you slept?”

“A couple of days,” he confessed. She tugged on his hand and gave him a stern look when he refused to rise at first. “Alright, alright,” he chuckled. “Am I being sent to bed without my supper?”

“You are,” she answered, “though if you’ll be good and obey me, I’ll see to it that you’re fed later.” She led him to his chambers and laughed at his incredulous look when he realized she meant to stay with him for a time. “Undress for bed,” she ordered. “I won’t look at you.”

She lied. She did look…just a bit. She was curious was all. That’s what she told herself. Her brother was handsome and well-muscled. She wondered if the other one had warped her very soul in some way for her to wish to see her brother in just his smallclothes. She was facing away when he turned back towards her.

“Lie down,” she said softly.

“Sansa…”

“Just do it, Jon,” she snapped and he laughed.

She liked that sound. It reminded her of summer days when life was sweeter and full of promise. _When we were children and winter was still just the threat of our House words_.

He complied and she covered him with his furs. She lay down next to him except she was on top of the furs and he was under them. She reached over and touched his face lightly. _I trust you. I would never be willing to lay here like this and touch you if I didn’t_.

“Sansa…thank you,” he murmured sleepily at last.

“You’re welcome.”

She watched him sleep for a long time, wondering what the curious thrumming of her blood could mean, before she finally left for her chambers.

 

* * *

 

 

The nightly visits continued. The comfort they found in each other’s company at night while the castle slept increased. Trust is not easily established for those who have been betrayed so foully, even when the person by their side was not their betrayer. They still argued. Not in front of the lords though they sometimes offered differing opinions from the other. They saved their arguments for the privacy of his solar or her chambers. But they did not argue at night.

At night, they found comfort in their love for each other. That love that had always been between them even when they did not agree as children, now it seemed to blossom into a different sort of bond. There was a growing trust and intimacy between them that they were discovering in each other as adults. And they sought something else…something their hearts craved though feared to hope for. And finally, there was a night when Sansa found that she did not wish for him to leave her when their time by the fire drew to a close.

“Jon,” she said quietly before he could reach the door. “Could you…would you stay here?”

“While you sleep?” he asked. It was not as though he’d never done so before but she was asking for more than his presence in the room until she fell asleep.

“I want…I want you to lay with me. In the bed.”

“Sansa…”

“Please. I’m so tired of being alone in here at night. He creeps back in my thoughts in the dark of night. I’ll sleep better with you beside me.”

He acquiesced after the feeblest of protests. She suspected that deep down he wanted this, too. He did not move away when she moved closer. His arm draped lightly across her. She reveled in the warmth of him on another cold winter’s night. And she reveled in the knowledge that she need not fear the man lying next to her in her bed for a change.

 _Not Tyrion who could’ve claimed me whenever he chose and not the one that did. Just Jon who promised to protect me and keep me safe_.

“Good night, sister,” he said.

 _Sister? Yes, you would want to remind us of that now, I suppose_ , she thought smirking to herself.

 

* * *

 

 

She watched him training in the yard from above. He moved with such grace and speed. He was pleasing to look upon with a smile lighting his face and color in his cheeks. She liked to see him happy. He was far happier here than in the hall or in the council meetings with the lords. Sometimes he would glance up and spy her. His smile would brighten then and it made her feel a flush of warmth every time.

But when she heard another approach, the tension began knotting in her stomach. _Why am I never free of you?_ His slippery words. His hints and teases and half-truths. She kept her eyes on Jon not caring if she seemed cold and distant.

“Quite the view from up here,” he said at last, glancing over his shoulder to look below.

She loathed him but they needed him…for now. “Quite the view? It’s just a muddy courtyard with men battering each other,” she said disdainfully as she turned her eyes on him at last.

“Well, it seems to hold your attention. Or perhaps someone does,” he said meaningfully.

He slithered away and Sansa looked back down with stony fury stamped on her face and right into the eyes of her brother who looked…betrayed.

She started to return inside but he met her on the walkway. His hair was matted with sweat despite the cold morning,

“What were you discussing with him?” he said harshly with the hurt plain on his face.

“Nothing of importance,” she protested.

“Sansa…don’t betray my trust again,” Jon said before he turned and walked away.

 _I wouldn’t_ , she wished to shout but instead her heart ached to know he could still doubt her.

 

* * *

 

 

The slimy shit grinned at him knowingly. He had provoked him into this response just as he had hoped. And Jon had walked right into it of course. _I still know nothing, it seems_.

Littlefinger had started pressuring him about a marriage for her.

“To strengthen your alliance with the Vale, Your Grace. She is not a maid but many men would be willing to overlook that. Many would still find her a pleasing prospect as a bride, no? Sister of the King in the North and the trueborn daughter of Winterfell and the North.”

And the more Jon had refused and the more short-tempered he grew, the more Littlefinger made little barbs about Jon’s devotion to his fair sister…his ‘unusually strong attachment’ to his half-sibling.

“I had no idea the two of you were ever all that close. But seeing you together now? Well, I’m sure your father and Lady Stark would be very pleased to see how much you look after her. Tell me, Your Grace, were you close to Lady Stark at all? I had heard that you were not…being a painful reminder to Catelyn of her beloved Ned’s infidelity and all. But I’m sure she would be delighted now to know that you’re protecting her dear daughter. Sansa looks so much like her, doesn’t she? Perhaps it’s not surprising that you seek Sansa’s affection since you never had any from her mother. But is it the affection of a sister that you seek…or something more?”

There was a flicker of fear on Baelish’s face as Jon pinned him to the wall by his neck. He knew Jon could, in a moment of temper, reach for his sword and end him…or even just squeeze the life out of him with his bare hands. But there was also that knowing, mocking grin of his present. He’d succeeded in getting under Jon’s skin so easily. A dangerous player that only a fool would trust.

 _I do not desire my sister_ , Jon told himself as he stormed away. And part of him knew that he lied.

 

* * *

 

 

The turning point was not much of a turning point at all. It was inevitable when he thought back on it later. Sharing the fire at night had led to spending more time together. They’d both come to depend on the other’s companionship at night even if they’d spent the day at odds. Their past horrors had created a bond between them deeper than what they’d shared as children. Nights of growing comfort and trust led to one or the other sitting on the bed while the other one sought sleep. And that led to sharing their beds before long. The next step should not have been unexpected. From the moment he’d held her when she found him at Castle Black and given meaning back to his existence, they’d been gradually pacing towards this end without ever meaning to or expecting it.

He woke in the night with her beside him. She had not left like usual. He stifled the groan in his throat. He was hard and wanting. He told himself he should have taken a wench to bed by now, some girl that would satisfy his animal lusts and keep his mind off his sister. But he hadn’t. He had never wanted just some girl and now he certainly didn’t, not if he could have her. Littlefinger had not been very far off the mark at all.

He reached for her, his hand settled on her hip. He thought she was asleep but he was wrong.

“Jon,” she said simply before rolling towards him.

Her face was close to his own. He could feel her breath and his hand reached up to feel the softness of her cheek. There was a hitch in her breath now and her liquid blue eyes were wide by the dim light of the dying fire.

“Sansa,” he said several tortuous moments later. _I want you_. He hated himself for that thought. “You should go back to your chambers now,” he said gruffly.

She backed away from him as though she had been burned but did not leave the bed. “Why?” she asked.

“Because…it’s better for us both if you do,” he said. _Because I do not trust myself to remember my honor or yours any longer this night_.

“Tell me why,” she said more forcefully. She sat up but made no move to rise. Instead, she touched his hand and now he was the one backing away.

“I can’t,” he choked out. “Please…just go.”

She didn’t go. She leaned down and put her face right in front of his…a challenge. “No,” she said before her hand brushed his cock through the breeches he still wore. He hissed at the contact and she grasped him more firmly. “Is this why you want me to go? Were you afraid you would upset me if I knew you felt desire while you lay here with me?”

“Please, go,” he begged once more, shoving her hand away.

“Not until you answer me this. Are you this way because you’re a man whose body wants a woman or are you this way because you want me?” He tried to turn his face away from her. He did not want to answer. “Answer me, Jon,” she said softly now. “Tell me true.”

He felt tears of shame gathering in his eyes but he would not lie to her. “I want you,” he croaked. “I want you. I am a bastard born of lust and a depraved and despicable man to desire his sister and…”

No further words were uttered before she pressed her lips to his. Her kiss was hard, almost like she was angry or desperate. He grasped her face to slow her and show her a gentler sort of kiss, full of reverence.

“I want you, too,” she gasped when their lips parted at last.

 

* * *

 

 

 _This is not what I expected_ , she thought as her toes curled and her moans increased. Jon leaned down to smother her moans with a kiss again. _Quiet_ , she would try to remind herself. _We must be quiet. It is different than what I had understood this act to be when I was a maid. And it’s so very different than it was with_ him.

“Jon,” she whimpered, “I…” _love you. Not today…another time_.

Jon’s face was nearing that look of bliss and rapture she loved seeing when they coupled. He was thrusting into her wetness with his eyes half-closed but still looking at her. He was biting at his lip and his face reminded Sansa of a man in deep contemplation. Then, he would pull out of her right before his features would clear, his eyes would close and then open again wider than before and his teeth would release his sweet bottom lip so that his mouth could part when he cried out at last.

“ _Unnngh_ …Sansa,” he grunted as she felt his hot and sticky seed shoot across her belly.

He breathed heavily and would brace himself above her until it slowed. Then, he always leaned down to kiss her mouth before he grasped a cloth to wipe her clean. Her favorite part was when he would nestle back down beside her before it was time for him to leave her or her to leave him.

_Someone to love me for something besides my claim. Is it too much to ask…even if he is my half-brother? How much longer can we keep this secret? Is it still a secret at all?_

“Jon…” she said _. I love you_.

“Hmmm?” he said sleepily.

“Nothing.”

 

* * *

 

 

She was astride him tonight and her mewling cries and sensuous moans were quiet and yet filled his head. She rocked her hips and her hands clasped her breasts. He couldn’t let her have them all to herself though. He leaned forward to capture a sweet, pink teat in his mouth and lick and suck at it until it became a stiff little pebble. He moved his attention to her other breast and she grasped his curls in her hands to keep him at his task. Not that he wanted to stop.

“Yes…” she panted. “Don’t stop that.”

“Never,” he mumbled. _I’ll never stop loving you no matter how wrong it is_.

She was close…but so was he now. His hands grasped her ass more firmly and he thrust more forcefully. She cried out at the increased fullness of him diving deep into her now. Listening to her cries and the wet, obscene sounds of their flesh smacking together while feeling her warm, slick cunt wrapped so tightly around his cock was driving him to his peak faster than usual. He wanted her to reach hers first. He’d brought her to one with his mouth and hand earlier but he loved seeing her face screwed up in ecstasy and then slack with contentment.

The sweet enchanted look on her face the first time he’d brought her to a peak, something she’d not understood or experienced in the past, made his heart swell with love and filled him with a sense of pride to please her so as she pleased him. And though he still felt great shame over what they were doing, he rarely felt it when they were here like this now.

“Sansa…” he warned. He’d need to pull out soon. He could’ve cursed in his vexation. He wasn’t going to get her there first this time.

“No,” she said in an authoritative voice.

“Please, love…I’m about to…”

She increased her pace and pinned his shoulders back against the bed. He could easily push her off of him but part of him didn’t want to.

“Spill inside me, Jon. I want you to fill me up.”

“Oh, gods,” he cried then, his release striking like a thunderbolt at her command and her request. “Oh…fuck,” he sighed as he felt her cunt pulsing around his cock and listened to her shout his name. “I love you,” he said without even thinking twice. His eyes flew open as soon as the words escaped. She was smiling at him. “I suppose that was a bit obvious but I should’ve said it sooner.”

“I love you, too,” was her response.

He held her to him for a time. Their time together was coming to an end. Jon hoped it would not be _the_ end. Duty was calling him away from their home. He would sail for Dragonstone within a fortnight. And now he’d just done something he’d never meant to do.

“Sansa…I shouldn’t have done that…not inside of you. What if…”

“I’ll take care of it, Jon,” she said, rolling away from him then. “You don’t need to worry.”

“I’m…Sansa, I love you. If there were a way…”

“There isn’t,” she said forlornly. “If they knew, we’d both be reviled. They’d call us Lannisters and…our babe would be called a…”

Her voice cracked and he felt broken. He held her to him and let her weep for them both.

 

* * *

 

 

_Why are you delaying? If you wait too long, the moon tea will not help._

She couldn’t help it. She had always dreamed of having children of her own. Her marriage had made her reconsider that for a time. She never wanted to bare _his_ child. But Jon? She would gladly bare their babe. She could refuse to name the father. Her reputation would suffer greatly and her child would be called a bastard. She didn’t want that but to consciously try and rid herself of their child? She couldn’t do it.

 _It was only the one time. It’s very unlikely there will be any issue regardless_.

But her heart hoped all the same.

The morning he left, they shared a quiet moment in an alcove away from the others preparing for the journey the King in the North would be making.

“Sansa,” he whispered tenderly. “I’ll miss you, my love.” The pain and shame were there in his eyes this morning as undeniable as the dawn. She wished it were otherwise. “I hope not to be away for long. You can send me word of course…for anything at all.”

“I know. Jon…” She nearly confessed what she had done…or not done. _We have come so far. I do not wish to tear down his trust and faith all over again_. “Have a safe journey and know that I will wish for your return.”

He cupped her check and kissed her once softly on the lips and then the forehead. He nodded to her and to himself and turned to go.

Sansa hid her tears and smiled at the party as they departed.

 _Please,_ she begged the old gods _. If you’re real at all, please_.

 

Many moons later, Jon had not yet returned but Arya and Bran had. And the Lady of Winterfell grew round with child. There were whispers throughout the castle and the North and guesses at the identity of the man with whom the lady may have lain. But the lady spoke not a word of it to any save her siblings. She would keep her silence until she could share the joyful news with her child’s father…her cousin.

**Author's Note:**

> This was a LONG one-shot for me but I hope you enjoyed it :)


End file.
